Pilot Guide
A pilot tests the workflow with one or two teams before a broader rollout. A good pilot runs for 1 to 2 weeks and compares the current reporting process against work captured from connected tools.
Define success before the pilot starts. Most teams measure reporting time, visibility into progress, blocker discovery, and whether developers feel less pressure to rewrite status by hand.
This guide walks through team selection, baseline questions, tool setup, the pilot window, and the evidence to bring back to leadership.
Pick your pilot team
Start with teams that feel the cost of manual reporting and can influence the larger organization. Good candidates spend visible time preparing standups, writing status updates, collecting progress from tools, or answering repeated status questions.
Prioritize a team that uses connected systems consistently. The pilot works best when commits, pull requests, issues, calendar events, and team communication already reflect the work.
After you identify the first team, agree on the pilot dates, the tools they will connect, and how feedback will be collected.
Create a baseline survey
Use a short baseline survey before changing the workflow. The goal is to capture how reporting works today, where information is missing, and how much time the team spends creating status manually.
Adapt these sample topics to your organization's language and goals.
Reporting overhead
Manual reporting adds friction, and friction usually creates incomplete data. Ask questions that reveal how much work becomes visible and how much time the team spends making it visible.
Visibility and clarity
Visibility questions show whether leaders can understand progress without asking the team to restate work that already happened in connected tools.
Developer experience
Developer experience questions show where status work interrupts focus or creates repeated context switching.
Set up integrations
Connect the apps the pilot team already uses daily:
- GitHub or GitLab for commits, pull requests, merge requests, and reviews
- Linear or Jira for issues, status, ownership, and project work
- Google Calendar for meetings, events, and standup schedules
- Slack for recaps, standup prompts, and team updates
Run the pilot
After setup, run the pilot for 1 to 2 weeks. During the pilot:
- Developers review their daily recaps
- Team leads check progress without asking for manual updates
- Teams skip or shorten standups
- No one writes manual status updates
If your team needs help during setup or rollout, contact support before the pilot window starts so the pilot period measures product usage instead of unresolved setup work.
Send a post-pilot survey
Reuse the baseline topics after the pilot, then compare the before and after responses. Add open text fields so people can explain what changed, where the product helped, and where the workflow still needs adjustment.
Request feedback by a specific date at least one week before a leadership review. That gives you time to compile results and follow up on unclear answers.
Sample questions:
Compile your data and present your case
Leadership needs a clear comparison, not a long list of anecdotes. Pull out the 4 to 5 strongest quantitative changes and place them beside the baseline. Add one short quote when it helps explain the metric.
Sample metrics to track:
Reporting time
Compare hours spent on status updates before and after. Show the reduction in reporting overhead.
Visibility improvement
Compare visibility scores before and after. Show how team leads gained real-time clarity.
Developer satisfaction
Compare developer experience scores before and after. Show how flow time increased.
Active use
Track how many team members actively use it. High adoption gives leadership useful evidence for rollout.
Make the switch
Pilot evidence should decide the next rollout step. Many teams expand to adjacent teams first, then move toward a wider workspace rollout once integrations, roles, and reporting routines are clear.
For broader rollout, continue with Getting started, Invite your team, and Set up integrations.